


I'm Not The Guy You're Taking Home

by WhoNatural



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Homoerotic Flying, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Multiple, Pining, Pre-Canon, Superheroes, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7715449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoNatural/pseuds/WhoNatural
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How come everything James Olsen says about Superman makes it sound like they're pining ex-boyfriends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Not The Guy You're Taking Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paintedrecs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/gifts).



> So since PaintedLandscape and I are Hoechlin Trash and watched Supergirl because of his casting as Clark Kent, we noticed that every mention of him by James sounds like they're ex-lovers who still have feelings for each other. And then Mehcad and Hoechlin met and it was everything we wanted. And _then_ I wanted to write something for Painted's birthday - so this happened. I hope this ship becomes a thing!!!
> 
> This was originally uploaded to Tumblr and is unbetaed. If you feel like it won't be up to your standards, maybe move on? 
> 
> Title is from Callum Scott's[ Dancing On My Own](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31tGyBJhRY), originally by Robyn. The most bisexual cover ever...

The first week in Metropolis, Clark gets through two attempted muggings and almost dents a cab when it doesn’t stop for the crosswalk.

The city is loud and grating and _constant._ Smallville was never constant - there was the town and then nothing and the Kents’ modest farm and then more nothing.That was his life for twenty-one years: living at home with a secret and then off-campus with a secret, and feeling like it was some kind of accomplishment that he never made a fuss; that nobody looked twice at _the Kent kid._ After college, when he travelled, he kept to the small towns, the secluded communities, the unspoilt wilderness. He flew and he stopped and he flew some more, higher and farther. At 30,000 feet, you can’t hear anything.

Just opening a window in this place is like breaking the volume dial off a stereo at max.

When he was in high school, he learned to slouch, to avert his eyes, keep to the corners and the crowds. Here, he doesn’t have to try. It’s like learning to control his powers all over again, and when the initial bombardment of _population_ becomes more bearable, he gets lost. It’s easy, here. Even when he was invisible back home, he was never _nobody._ He goes to stores and fits out his modest apartment and nobody asks him about his business, nobody cares that he’s all the way from Kansas (and much further than that) and that he doesn’t have anything - or any _one_ \- here other than a stack of articles he wrote for the college newspaper and an interview with Perry White.

Perry talks like he’s late for something. He tells Clark ‘ _I like you, kid_ , _you don’t interrupt’_ and then tells him it’s his lucky day. He calls someone else into the office to show Clark around, and the guy is Clark’s age. He’s gangly; tall with a megawatt grin, and his skin is dark but it _glows._ He’s got this quick laugh, and a voice that’s deeper than his age would suggest - which is calm like the middle of the ocean.

(The middle of the ocean is Clark’s favorite place to think.)

The guy claps a hand on Clark’s shoulder as they walk, says, “Everyone calls me Jimmy here, but I kinda hate that, what’s your deal?” and Clark realizes how long it’s been since someone asked him about himself.

He realizes how much he’d craved it, and that Jimmy Olsen might just be the quiet in the middle of the clamor.

“My name is Clark,” he responds and for the first time, he wants to elaborate.

* * *

 

Clark Kent is just a whole bunch of contradictions. He’s not small, but he tries to _seem_ to be. He’s got a lot to say, but he never just comes out with it - not without being prompted, anyway. He’s got a these eyes that James knows for a fact could make someone go all weak at the knees, yet he needlessly hides them behind those big thick glasses, and he’s built like a tank but doesn’t ever seem to actually work out. He seems so chill, but sometimes he gets this look on his face like a flash of deadly determination. Other times, he just looks terrified - yet anyone who doesn’t have balls _somewhere_ couldn’t openly disagree with Lois Lane in meetings and breathe normally. To James, it’s fascinating - someone struggling to figure things out watching someone else do the same gives him a sense of serenity, like maybe it’s okay to be unsure of where you’re supposed to be at. Maybe you shouldn’t have it all figured out at 23.

With time, something about Clark changes, and James starts getting curious. There’s the reflexes (which were always there) added to the weird absences...the refusal to join the _Planet_ ’s softball team. The things nobody could _possibly_ hear or know. The curiosity metamorphoses to suspicion when he sees Clark happily give credit away to other reporters for stuff _he’s_ done.

When the guy with the cape shows up, James is entranced - and honestly, kind of embarrassed that he doesn’t put it together right away. He becomes obsessed with trying to get a photo, with being in the middle of the action, and he eventually gets his wish.

Of course, it takes a near-death experience to get there: James is looking down the barrel of a gun one minute, desperately trying to remember the last time he called home and if he told his mom he loved her - and the next he’s looking down from the top of the closest building, being set down by a pair of arms that feel like bridge cables.

He sees it then. It’s probably the angle of light, or the mental picture frame that a living of taking photos has imprinted on his brain - but he recognizes him. Not quickly enough to say anything in those few seconds, but when his head stop spinning, and James’s feet are still, he shakes his head.

“Well... shit.”

The next day at work, Clark is all avoidance and deadlines and _I need to get this to Lois, sorry man._ It takes an entire day before James eventually follows him outside and says, “I know it’s you.”

Instead of protest or denial or whatever James had been anticipating - Clark slumps. He turns with a wan smile, takes a breath, and says, “ _Finally.”_

“‘Finally’ what? You been broadcasting your secret identity around the place and I’m the last to know?”

“Technically,” Clark says gesturing to himself, his button-down and slacks with a smirk, “ _This_ is my secret identity.”

“Man, shut up.”

“Sure, Jimmy.”

“I told you I hate that.”

“Don’t get to choose our names, sorry,” Clark replies, smiling for possibly the first time since James met him, and loosening his tie. He sobers and holds his hand out - not to shake, but as an invitation. “Hey, come with me?”

James looks slowly from the upturned palm to his friend, who just yesterday was a complete different person...yet _not._ He barks out a laugh, almost manic.

“Anywhere.”

The photo James takes that day, after Clark flies them back from a remote cliffside where there are hours of questions and history and explanations, eventually wins him a Pulitzer.

* * *

 

Having Jimmy is like a mental marker from the air when Clark can’t find his way back home. There are people out to get him with impossible powers and there are people who say terrible things and who question his motives. There are rumors and accusations and threats to his family - to his parents.

He’s grateful every time that they don’t know about Kara.

But there’s Jimmy, who gets why he does it all. Jimmy reminds him that he can _try,_ and keep trying - that people can get to know the real you, even though they didn’t raise you, and still think you’re a good person. That not everyone is cynical and cold and jaded by the world he’s trying to protect.

Seeing himself through that new lens is exhilarating; opening up a whole world to someone who just found out it existed. The look on Jimmy’s face every time he takes flight is the same as the first time, and every time it feels as thrilling to see. So Clark pushes harder, flies faster, tries to always be there - and he is. They grow together, hero and companion, and Clark stops feeling so alone.

It makes him a better person: it makes him Superman.

Suddenly, he’s trusted. People actively call his name when they’re scared and in need, and each time Clark hears it, it makes this warm rush of acceptance flood his chest. They want to take pictures and wear t-shirts with his symbol and shake his hand and say thank-you. It makes him feel like he’s got a _home_ , billions of lightyears from where it all imploded.

\--

When James starts dating Lucy, Clark is genuinely happy - she’s beautiful and strong and feisty and a _Lane._ But the guilt at making him keep such a huge secret drives a wedge between them for the first time. James never says it, but it’s there in the pinched corner of his smile or the smooth lies he has to rhyme off to her. It festers; they see less of one another. Clark feels this... this _loss_ that’s bone-deep; something that makes it feel like he couldn’t quite take flight, weighed down by the ache of it.

But he does, and he goes out and he stops crashes and blocks bullets and he comes when James calls. He gives him the sonic watch and smiles and says _any time_ \- and means it. It eventually puts a band-aid over the fissure, for a time.

The thing is, Clark is emotionally articulate enough to identify that the feeling should have subsided with James wanting to stay in his life. Studying his culture, he knows Kryptonians were indiscriminate with who they loved. When you find someone who can see all sides of you and accept them, it’s a special kind of honor, one that’s respected regardless of who shares it. Here on Earth, people don’t have the same freedom - it’s getting there, but he begins to wonder what a reality where he could say it out loud without fear would be like. Where he could hold James’s hand instead of patting him on the back, where he didn’t need the excuse of flying to get close.

Where he could have been brave in this part of his life, too.

But sometimes, all your bravery gets used up in one place. You can’t spare any for the quiet moments where your hands feel like they might tremble right off if you don’t get to touch someone, and where nothing in the entire world seems as loud as the things you can’t say.

* * *

All James can bring himself to tell him is that he couldn’t give Lucy what she wanted.

Clark creases his brow and looks genuinely crushed for him, and James wants to laugh. _I couldn’t give you up. That’s what she wanted._

“You should go to National City,” Clark suggests much later, eyes focused on something far-off - or maybe inwardly; James can never really tell. It takes him a second, then he tilts his head back.

“Leave Metropolis?”

Clark lifts a shoulder. “Is there anything left for you here?”

James doesn’t reply. He doesn’t trust himself to.

So, he agrees to go. It’d be easier not to see Lucy all the time, and maybe he could get rid of this ridiculous man-crush. _It’s a crush,_ a voice in his head supplies, _it stopped being a man-crush the moment he set you down after flying and you had to tell yourself to let go._

Kara is sweet and genuine and she wants to make a real difference, and every day he spends helping her, James feels like it wasn’t such a waste, running away. By the time Lucy finds him, he’s got himself convinced that he’s over it all; that maybe they could make it work if James isn’t spending his nights loving her but his days loving someone else.

Of course, it doesn’t work. That fissure somehow healed and reinforced itself, and he’s able to acknowledge for the first time that taking yourself out of the situation doesn’t make the situation disappear. Sometimes, he finds himself talking about Clark and not being able to stop, and he wonders if it’s all as obvious as it feels.

* * *

He manages to exist through phone calls, texts, IMs. Jimmy sounds fulfilled and content, and the way Kara talks about him makes him sound like the same person Clark fell for. It makes a happy ache form in his chest; he knows that it’s better for everyone this way. Kara can protect herself - protect James and vice versa - and he vows to wait in the wings if and when he’s needed. It works, for a time.

Until Myriad.

He’s off-planet when it hits. When the program spreads like a virus and then makes Jimmy step off the side of a skyscraper, Clark is past waiting. The blind panic with which he flies to National City lowers his defenses and he falls under the mind-control immediately, plummeting uselessly to the pavement.

Failing.

Later, it’ll be explained that it was because he’s ‘mostly human’ - but the way he felt waking up and immediately asking about Jimmy tells its own story - he’s been compromised.

So he leaves, quietly. He goes back to Metropolis to get his head straight and figure out how to exist when the biggest part of him is in another place. This isn’t the sense of displacement he’s lived with his entire life - it’s a void, immune to good deeds and gratitude. It’s learning to survive without a limb.

* * *

Kara’s face is resigned.

“You should go get him.”

Her voice is soft, like coaxing a wounded animal - James supposes he’s had the same empty expression on his face for days, ever since Clark went back to Metropolis without so much as a conversation. A look of regret - of shame, because you can sit for hours at someone’s bedside while they’re unconscious but can’t bring yourself to be there when they wake up. Because you can’t handle seeing someone normally so reliably invulnerable look like you might be able to lose them, if the right combination of freak events happens.

Because you don’t know what you’ll do if they _do._

“He’s probably real busy,” he tries. She gets the cute crease between her eyes that he first noticed back when he really wanted to love her. She’s beautiful, in all the ways women and Kryptonians are - but she’s not who he wants.

“For you?” she needles, tone light. “Hardly. Besides, he keeps checking up on you. Thinks he’s being subtle.”

James feels punched-through. “Yeah?” he croaks.

Kara nods. “I could use some help with this, anyway,” she says, gesturing back to the open - now empty - pod with a scowl. “It’s not something you can explain over the phone.”

James takes a breath, staring at it, but at nothing. “Okay.”

* * *

 

“...Oh, and James Olsen is in your office.”

Clark stops, caught off-guard for the first time in recent memory. “He is?”

The intern readjusts her glasses and clicks the pen. “Yeah, I told him you were out in the field but he said he’d wait. Didn’t seem urgent. You’re friends, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” he swallows, squaring his shoulders. “Friends.”

Hesitating outside the door, Clark wonders if James is aware he’s out here. Aware he’s sweating like a teenager, rehearsing what to say - but the uptick in the heartbeat on the other side of the door is telling, and he’s bolstered enough to go in.

James stands, wiping his palms on his jeans. His eyes are sad, and Clark fights the urge to step closer - like he’s ever had the right.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly, feeling the static in the air. It’s something easily ignored before, but after a prolonged separation, is as tangible as the door handle Clark’s still holding.

“Hey,” James responds, “Sorry if you’re busy...”

“Not for you,” Clark replies, before immediately mentally berating himself for it and then leaving down his messenger bag. He pretends to shuffle through some memos. “So, what’s up?”

“We need your help.”

The four words shouldn’t be as disappointing as they are, but Clark bites down on them, his concern over-taking.

“Everything okay?”

“Kara found something... it’s kind of a long story.”

“Okay.”

“And I wanted to.. Check. On you.”

“On me...” He’s lucky James can’t hear his heart.

“You were out a while. With the Myriad thing.”

Clark looks away again. “Oh. That was... my fault. I wasn’t careful enough. Too pre-occupied after...you know.”

James tilts his head. “I was okay,” he frowns.

“I know that, but.”

“You were worried?” He sounds almost happy about it.

“So were you...”

“Yeah, but you’re the Man of Steel - it’s a big deal when you take a hit.”

Clark scowls. “And it’s not when you do? You’re just as important - _more_ so, to some people.”

James steps closer, a familiar swagger that’s come with maturity creeping back into his stance. Clark blinks away from it; he’s never known how he’s supposed to react, or why it has such an effect on him.

“Some people?” It’s a tease.

“To me,” Clark snaps. “I was concerned, for you, and it made me sloppy. Happy?”

James falters a little. “Not really.” He lets out a breath. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“We must be even, then. Is that why you’re here?”

“No, I’m here because even Kara knows I’ve been next to useless since I...since we nearly lost you. I had to be sure.”

Clark raises a brow. “Well now you’ve seen, right? You can rest easy.”

“No,” James replies. It sounds definitive. “I can’t, knowing that I could lose you for good. I’m not letting it happen.”

“You won’t lose me.”

“Right, because I already have.”

It goes silent between them, Clark doesn’t know when he started breathing so heavily, a cautious hope bubbling up in his chest. Their eyes meet, and he shakes his head. “Not even close,” he says, and kisses him.

It’s like flying all over again, as terribly cliché as that sounds - but Clark figures he’s one of the few people on this planet who really know what it’s like, and he gets to use the metaphor as much as he wants.

James makes him feel precious and protected, unburdened in a way he’s never really had the luxury of experiencing. Like he can be open and honest without fear of rejection - like he’ll be caught if he falls. He pulls closer, seeking that reassuring weight against his chest, and it’s the culmination of a thousand late nights investigating, a hundred near-misses that pushed them closer, and a lifetime of always fighting one another’s corner, no matter the challenge.

When they pull apart, Clark is light-headed and speechless, falling back into his own space in a daze.

“Is that what you came here for?” he asks, watching the shy smile dawn across James’s features.

“No, that was a bonus.” The joke seems to remind him that he did have a purpose. “We really do need your help back in National City, though,” he says, looking almost abashed to admit it. “Kara just sent me so I’d stop.... Uh, nevermind. We kinda have somewhere to be.” He steps back, picking up his jacket, and holds out a hand. Clark frowns at it, until he asks,

“Come with me?”

Clark bites his lip, chest soaring.

“Anywhere.”


End file.
